Sunday, February 27, 2011

I'm Okay, the Cheese is Okay

Speaking of habitual if unnecessary purchases, there are certain stores (Whole Foods, Garden of Eden, the evil temptresses) that I just can't enter without buying cheese. And cheese experimentation is very appealing when you can get small triangles for < $4 without committing to an entire pound.

Unfortunately sometimes this leads to 10 or more varieties in the cheese drawer which can be too much for even an experienced fridge inventorier to manage alone. As a consequence, I have become somewhat of an expert on the "can I eat this?" field of cheese study which specifically addresses the question of mold.

The table below from the Mayo Clinic, which summarizes some USDA/FDA information, is particularly helpful when encountering a can I eat this? cheese-based dilemma. Cheese ripens from the outside in (unless engineered otherwise), so unsavory molds and harmful bacteria are more likely to hang out on the surface of the cheese which is directly exposed to air and moisture. This means that your shredded/crumbled/soft/porous cheeses are much more susceptible to spoilage than hard cheeses which are kept in their block or wedge shapes, so don't break up the cheese until you're ready to use it. I've maintained wedges of hard pecorino romano and asiago cheese in my fridge for close to a year with no ill effects. Seriously.

By the time freshly made cheeses in the "do not eat" column like ricotta, fresh mozzarella, and cottage cheese even get moldy, they are far beyond being edible anyway. When in doubt, just taste it and you'll know pretty quickly whether you can eat it or not (ie anything sewagey, sour, or that otherwise makes your tongue tingle in the bad way should be a no go).

As an addendum, I have removed mold from both cream cheese and aged mozzarella and lived to tell the tale. I've also never actually seen mold grow on feta, Gorgonzola, blue, Brie, or Camembert cheeses, but am not sure if this speaks more to the hardiness of these cheeses or my rate of consumption.